Danish star singer gives Opera House’s new acoustics a workout

A recital by Danish star baritone Bo Skovhus gave music lovers the chance to check out the Opera House’s new acoustics.

Bo Skovhus gave a recital in the newly-reopened Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. Picture: Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

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For those of us who missed the gala opening concert performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony a morning recital by Danish baritone Bo Skovhus was the first chance to check out the acoustics of the newly renovated Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.

And from my seat in the seventh row of the stalls they sounded pretty impressive. Judging by the applause from the circle and upper tier those punters were pretty happy as well.

Sydney Symphony Orchestra chief conductor Simone Young was to have accompanied Skovhus on piano in a program of songs by Haydn, Schubert and Robert Stolz for a recital with Vienna as its theme – the city where the two musicians first collaborated almost 30 years ago when Young conducted a production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin starring the Dane.

However Young damaged her shoulder in a fall in Paris so most of the piano duties were performed by Australian pianist Andrea Lam, who returned to Sydney after the pandemic forced her to scuttle her US career. Lam took on the job at the last minute, despite having another concert to perform later that evening, and lived up to her regular rave reviews.

Andrea Lam was a last-minute replacement.. Picture: Anka Boychev

The switch was seamless, and from the opening bars of the six English songs Haydn composed when he was staying in London you would have thought she and the baritone were seasoned recital partners. This rarely performed set is high on charm but Skovhus, a consummate actor, and Lam both came into their own in the bracket that followed, eight of Schubert’s late songs including seven from the Schwanengesang cycle.

These settings of poems by Ludwig Rellstab – high on drama and running the gamut of emotions from grief over lost love, separation and loneliness – demand a lot of both musicians and they did not disappoint.

Young was persuaded to play for the two lighter and less challenging Stolz songs that closed the concert, both written for the German cinema in the 1930s before the rise of the Nazis forced the composer to leave Austria for Switzerland and later America for the duration of World War II.

Simone Young and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra rehearsing for the gala concert. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian.

Young and Skovhus have maintained their musical partnership over the years. They performed Schubert’s Winterreise in the Opera House’s intimate Utzon Room in 2014 and during lockdown they recorded Hans Werner Henze’s opera Das Verratene Meer in the empty Vienna State Opera House.

After the Stolz set the pair were called back for an encore. Continuing the Viennese theme they invited the predominantly older audience to join in with Rudolf Sieczynski’s sentimental hit Wien, Wien nur du allein, made popular by Richard Tauber and Fritz Wunderlich in the last century.

Lam was brought back for the final song, Hans Christian Andersen’s I Love You – a chance for Skovhus to sing in his native language.

Skovhus later appeared with Young and the SSO in a performance of Brahms’s German Requiem alongside popular Australian soprano Emma Matthews. That concert is repeated at 2pm in the Concert Hall on Saturday, August 6, and Sunday, August 7.

DETAILS

CONCERT SSO: Bo Skovhus recital

WHERE Sydney Opera House

WHEN August 5, 2022